User Comments - goulnik
goulnik
Posted on: 户籍制度
February 2, 2009 at 5:20 AMmiantiao, I'm not sure what you mean by 'all english vowels have two phenomes, A has three. Y has three phenomes, and about 5 or 6 other consonants have 2 phenomes... a chinese character rarely has more than 1 phenome 行 being an example.'
I guess you're refering to 'phonemes' and not 'phenomes'... I would rephrase as 'English vowels (can) represent different speech sounds, and Chinese characters are rarely 多音字 (duōyīnzì)'. though a number of frequently used characters do have multiple readings. This may sound pedantic, but if you want to discuss fine linguistic points, you need to use precise language.
Posted on: 户籍制度
February 1, 2009 at 2:35 PManother vocabulary point : I think here as well as in the expansion examples, 罪魁祸首 should be translated as 'chief culprit' rather than 'criminal leader', same as 罪魁.
Posted on: 户籍制度
February 1, 2009 at 12:00 PMI actually treat 1-2 and 3 above differently in the 'scattering' factor of my phonetic character maps.
Posted on: 户籍制度
January 22, 2009 at 8:49 AMI think you need to distinguish the 'r' sound depending on whether it's isolated (retroflex) as in 事儿 (shìr), in front as in 然后 (ránhòu)、or at the as 2nd character as in 当然 (dāngrán). In addition, it may depend on the attached vowel - to me, 日本(rìběn) has a quite different feel.
I wouldn't venture into mouth / lip / throat physiology to explain, but the fact is pinyin can be quite confusing : aside from 'r', the 'i' in 'zi','zhi','si', 'ci has a different sound from the 'i' in 'qi', 'ji', 'ti' etc.
Posted on: 成长的烦恼
January 8, 2009 at 6:09 AM按照 Don Tapscott's 《grown-up digital》 那本书，越来越多的西方年轻人毕业以反而后回家，不紧着搬出去，都享享舒适的家庭生活。这跟60后、70后完成不一样，那时候大家造反，反对父母的规定和生活方式，最早离家的最好…
Posted on: 长征
December 4, 2008 at 12:53 PMwhile I agree with pearltowerpete and jennyzhu, I would think there are more elaborate translation tools available. They may not be online and free, and some may be specific to language pairs, I'd be surprised that there isn't ...
anyway, there is no doubt these don't compete with human translators. I never use these tools myself for Chinese, but when you need to get the gist of say, an email exchange that started in German, that's quite handy.
Posted on: 长征
December 4, 2008 at 12:15 PMamesburygeorge, all you need is 5 keys actually. on my smartphone, I use the (amazing) A4 手机输入法 (input method for PPC), and in 笔画 mode, 一丨丿丶 and 乙 are enough to specify all characters.
There are many other modes too such as pinyin, and there, 8 keys is all you need, basically like when you write text messages on a cellphone numeric keypad. You need several strokes, but with predictive input it's actually quite fast
Posted on: 一见钟情
November 24, 2008 at 5:58 AM对话里面有那个句子“我们聊得特别投机。”
这里的‘投机’并不是‘寻找并利用机会谋取私利’或‘投机钻营’，但‘合得来’。 也就是说，‘投机’的翻译不是 speculate, 是 get along well。
Posted on: 河莉秀
November 20, 2008 at 7:59 AMPrevalence of transsexualism: see this paper by Lynn Conway, updated 2008. Amazing conclusion that sex reassignment surgery (SRS) in the U.S. is at least on the order of 1:2500.
This contrasts with another 2008 report ranking gender identity disorders (GID) as 1:12,000 for male>female and 1:30,000 for female>male
Posted on: 休闲游戏
February 26, 2009 at 7:56 AMtypos/tweaks in vocab translation :